Whether creating an acid portrait of Sweden, representing the nightmarish world of business offices, tapping into the desolate uniformity of petrified, petit-bourgeois neighbourhoods, examining the state of marginalised peoples in a nation praised for its system of social protection, or exploring the strangeness of a town on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, Lars Tunbj√∂rk has totally forgotten his black and white beginnings.

All his energy is now devoted to the exploration of colour, which he approaches in the style of 1970‚Äôs American photographers. This is his starting point for questioning the world, a series of interrogations more than observations, which he develops without pessimism but with an undeniable affliction softened by a biting humour. Over time, his approach has become radicalised and purified by being less and less anecdotal. Consequentially, his series no longer represents characters but rather the often absurd track of their presence and their actions.

Portfolio

Portraits

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Every day (2014)

When Lars Tunbjork approaches Beauvais (France-Picardie) he immediately recognizes other places that he has already experienced as an explorer, a situation of every photographer encounters when he discovers a new fragment of the universe. Therefore, he shows us faces ‚Äď frontally, up-close - , residential areas, companies, and, all around, what remains of nature.
In the region's offices he sees what we can't see as we don't share his approach. Offices where the absurd spatial organization, invasion by machines and weariness of individuals only equal the pathetic presence of a green plant lost in the dark purple tones of an open-space cluttered by files, interact with the surprise of a...

Americans of a hard-pressed middle class who want to change their life, people feeling nervous about retirement, or businessmen who see the lowly mobile home as their vehicle to financial freedom; they are all here for the Mobile Home University lessons. This intensive three-day course is about how to strike it rich in the trailer-park business.
There are 8.6 million mobile homes in the United States, according to a 2013 U.S. Census Bureau report and an estimated 12 million people live in an actual trailer park.
A way to travel in comfort on long trips before motels lined the roads, the mobile home is now a low cost housing. A booming market in times of economical crisis. Did Warren...

For centuries, falcons have been revered in the Middle East for their beauty, fierce demeanor and superb hunting ability. So it is fitting that Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is home to the largest hospital for falcons in the world, where falcons are treated in operating rooms, an ophthalmology department and a pox area. (There is even a large intensive-care unit for the sickest birds.)
When Dr. Margit Muller, the hospital‚Äôs director, describes a typical day there, it sounds much like a place devoted to the treatment of human patients: conducting rounds, checking up on the administration of medication, surgery. ‚ÄúFalcons are regarded like children in a family,‚ÄĚ...

Lars Tunbj√∂rk didn‚Äôt have to look very far to find, in the middle of no where in the US, what makes his work so special‚Ä¶ Which is the sudden appearance in what seams like a perfectly normal daily life of absurd and comical situations.
On his assignment to cover the Iowa Republican‚Äôs caucuses, Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjork is following the candidates on their electoral marathon.
Mormon Mitt Romney and his wife Ann shaking hands in small town‚Äôs gymnasium, devout Rick Santorum praying before a plate of nachos, Rick Perry getting the crowd riled up, and finally Newt Gingrich accompanied by Ellis the Republican Elephant‚Ä¶They are all offering to the photographer‚Äôs lens their...

While many countries are still reeling from the global financial crisis, China is witnessing a frenzy of consumer spending, encouraged by its government.
Having leapfrogged America last year to become the world‚Äôs second-biggest consumer of luxury goods ‚ÄĒ behind Japan ‚ÄĒ China now has a 200m-strong middle class that is eager to part with its disposable income. The wedding industry is thriving, with couples willing to spend thousands and book their perfect day years in advance.
An ever-increasing number of malls and department stores are packed to the rafters with everything from bedding to top-of-the-range white goods. All this is not just good news for China: while its citizens...

It‚Äôs one thing to renovate a house. It‚Äôs quite another to turn a cave ‚ÄĒ or a water tower or a church ‚ÄĒ into a home. Lars Tunbjork traveled from England to Canada and the United States to Germany to meet these eccentric residents who made their living spaces into exceptional houses.
In Kyloe in English Northumberland, a family transformed an 18th-century church. After the space‚Äôs desacralization, they now shower in the sacristy and sun-bathe in the old grave yard.
The Sleepers bought the Missourian cave in which they live today on eBay, while the Reuss family reside in a house built from recycled materials from Boston‚Äôs Big Dig.
In Germany, a water tower dating from...

Sixty years ago, the village's child prodigy, Ingvar Kamprad, was seventeen years old and sold matches. Contrary to the modest trade as Andersen portrays, this will be the starting point of a fabulous empire. Kampgrad quickly founded his own company selling pens, furniture, socks... He names it Ikea, an acronym of his initials, that of his village and that of his farm. The legend is born.
Today, Ikea has 267 stores in 35 countries, with sales figures of 21 Billion euros. The kid selling matches is 83 now, he lives in Switzerland, and enjoys a modest fortune estimated at 33 Billion dollars. The small, cosmopolitan town of √Ąlmhult maintains its quiet life, religiously paced by the...

On the run for 12 years, Rodovan Karadzic lived using the fake identity of Dragan Dabic, natural medicine specialist, when he was arrested in Belgrade on the July 22nd 2008.
The former chief of Bosnia's Serbian people is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
At the time of his arrest, Dragan Dabic was quickly becoming somewhat of a celebrity in Belgrade: he had his own column in a national magazine and he was collaborating with a well-known sexologist on a novel form of sperm-rejuvenation therapy.
Lars Tunbjork went to Belgrade and photographed those who met with him during these 12 years. From a nationalist bar keeper to followers of alternative medicine,...

International food prices raised by almost 40 percent in 2008, indicating that the monetary price is finally catching up with the true costs of cheap food : obesity in the U.S., malnutrition in developing countries and environmental degradation everywhere.
Portraits of young leaders who are changing the way we eat.

The photographs in the Vinter series deal with the mental state we enter during the dark period of the year. Between 2004 and 2007, Lars Tunbjork travelled around Sweden, trying to capture the mood that the winter months put us in here in northern Europe. The project became a way of doing something creative with the feelings of depression that beset him in the winter season. He shows us snowed-in playgrounds, streets and houses, but the selection of pictures also includes interiors, from cafes, restaurants and shops. We see people in their homes, at work or at parties.This series of photographs has another tone, another colour ranger, another temperament than his previous work, yet we...

Located in the far ends of Sweden, the city of Kiruna came out of the ground to serve the exploitation of the most important iron mine in the world. Authorities had wanted to make it as the spearhead of the Sweden conquest of its territory.
Lars Tunbjork draws here the portrait of the inhabitants of a city, which, in summer, never sees the sunset.
It‚Äôs moreover a portrait of the whole city that Lars Tunbjork makes: but not in a documentary way. Architecture, as well as inhabitants, becomes a character that occupies the frame and strikes a pose for the photographer.

In Sweden, some people are acknowledged as electrosensitive. They accuse electromagnetic waves to be the cause of the itches, migraines or dizziness they suffer, and use different methods to protect themselves.
The scientist are divided on the question.

Dubai is certainly one of the best spot in the world for sports : one can choose between a round of golf on a course watered by 2,256 sprinklers, a cricket match played on imported English soil, tennis, field hockey, Formula 1, camel races, or even skiing !
The Emirati billionaires pursue their quest to provide the biggest and best of everything.

Cannes film festival is often remembered with conventionnal pictures : a red carpet, some stars...
But Lars Tunbjork is offering here his quirky look on this big mass of the international cinema. Photographs full of micros and video cameras, of personnalities or random people. Stars always on the run, between two flashes. Lars Tunbjork shows us the excess of the most mediatic festival of the world.

Golf comes to the Middle Kingdom, with sometimes curious results.
For all intents and purposes, golf in China is just 20 years old. t hasn't evolved. It has arrived full-blown, in its high-end and even slightly decadent form.
The first modern course, an Arnold Palmer design, opened in 1984. Another dozen or so were added in the decade following. But in the last 10 years the total has soared to 230, making China second in Asia in terms of golf course acreage (behind Japan), and though there is supposed to be a moratorium on constructing courses, new ones seem to spring up every month.

More than just a serie of portrait of the American novelist Philip Roth, Lars Tunbjork is proposing here a true research work on the writer and his books. Philip Roth is photographed in situation, in spots that, without being in his novels, are as imaginary. it is Philip Roth in Philip Roth's America: a reinvented America.

Offices in New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, are the place of a life that people lose while earning it, they are unbearable.
Nightmares made of electric cables, depressing cafeterias, fake spaces, absurd tidy up, they become through the eye of Lars Tunbjork the most radical call for rebellion for a renewed ¬ę right to laziness ¬Ľ.
This work, which with ¬ę Home ¬Ľ, constitutes discreetly and without obvious agressivity the most implacable critic of our system, a work extremely political under a perfectly acceptable cover, is only possible with a perfect control of color, which becomes the material of the picture.

I Love Boras is Lars Tunbj√∂rk‚Äôs document of an aimless journey around Sweden between 1988 and 1995. Supermarkets, parties, small town streets, amusement parks, gas stations, TV-shows, landscapes, food. During that time Tunbj√∂rk was working on his series "Landet utom sig" (Country Beside Itself), but these images were not used in that series because they didn‚Äôt fit, they were too ugly, too beautiful or too silly. Together they show a darker and more hysteric view of modern western society and Sweden during the economic recession of the early nineties.

Lars Tunbjork invites us to the land of great spaces, and of children dreams. The cowboy, mythic character of John Ford‚Äô films, rises to a burlesque existence, by the way of the photographer work. We meet, of course, a John Wayne in cardboard, but also really Far West inhabitants.

I Love Bor√•s is Lars Tunbj√∂rk‚Äôs document of an aimless journey around Sweden, his home country. Supermarkets, parties, small town streets, amusement parks, gas stations, TV-shows, landscapes, food. A dark and hysteric view of modern western society and Sweden during the economic recession of the early nineties.Publisher: Steidl (2007)200 pagesSize: 35x28 cm

Vinter

Co-published with Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Lars Tunbj√∂rk has travelled around Sweden in an attempt to capture the atmosphere of the winter months for people living in Scandinavia. The project started as a means of surviving the dark part of the year. This series of photographs has a different mood, colour range and temperament compared to his previous work, but his style, his understated humour and often absurd subject matter are still unmistakable.Publisher: Steidl Publishing (2007)192 pagesSize: 23 x 28 cm

Lars Tunbj√∂rk returned to his childhood neighborhood to photograph his mother's house. The experience intrigued him, and he continued shooting in similar areas around Sweden. Saturated with other people's personal memories, his photographs convey the peculiar atmosphere of silence familiar in middle-class housing districts, not only in Sweden but in other countries as well.Text by: Goran OdbrattPublisher: Editions Steidl (2003)106 pagesSize: 29x26,5 cm

Office/Kontor

Lars Tunbj√∂rk pictures people in the place where they spend much of their day: at work. In office buildings he photographs the personnel in the rigidly designed work environment. In these sterile work spaces, however, each person still expresses their individuality. They add something personal to the bleak furnishings, as a result of which each photo will tell its own, inscrutable story. In each photograph a balance between humour and sadness becomes apparent, a human factor that is at odds with the strict organisation of the work.Publisher: Editions Journal (2002)116 pagesISBN :9197362972

Lars Tunbj√∂rk shares with us, without judging, his global view of the development of our society, which is obsessed with consumerism. The series ‚ÄúI love Boras‚ÄĚ, inspired by his native town, describes a Sweden of the 1990s at the height of mutation. His art of photography, easily recognized, is distinguished especially for his sense of colour, his humour and his capability to catch the instantaneous mise-en-scene of daily-life without falling into the anecdote. Lars Tunbj√∂rk brings to light the incoherencies of the world and shows that beyond appearances our universe is quite...

Photophnompenh Festival
Lars TUNBJORK comes from the world of press photography (he first worked in black and white for a Swedish daily newspaper). Over the years, he then became one of the greatest contemporary colorists ‚Äď in a more and more radical process of elimination of anecdotes. He is also one of those who succeeded in avoiding ‚Äôtrends‚Äô, to invent a writing that belongs only to him. First, with crushing humor, he painted, without any malice, the foibles of his contemporaries, by inventing absurd situations and functioning, especially around consumption. He had a crazy vision...